Thursday, June 29, 2006

Google has launched Google Checkout a PayPal-like system to shop online without having to re-enter your personal information, and without having to remember different passwords. There areen't many stores honoring the service, yet. Knowing Google, though, that should change quickly. Several merchants are offering promos with $10 discounts on purchases of $20 or more. I just used the service at Starbucks.com and it worked like a charm - AND I got $10 off on a $26 order!

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The company, which spins out of Israel's technical university Technion, has devised a coating for 5.25 optical disks that can hold up to a terabyte of storage, according to Zohan Gendler, who runs the incubator at Technion. The incubator takes promising ideas concocted by professors, students and local entrepreneurs and turns them into companies.

The massive increase in storage (Blu-ray disks will hold 50GB while HD DVD will hold less) is a variant of holographic storage. Producing the disks, when mass manufacturing occurs, should only cost $2 to $3 dollars. The disks only need a 500 micron thick layer of the coating.

"It stores in the volume (of the material) not just the surface," he said.

The company is in initial negotiations with brand name Japanese manufacturers.

The first discs will hold 500GB and be sold to corporations for storage. Later it will move into the high definition entertainment market.

Nolo Press Self-help books are written by lawyers. They give clear, no nonsense instructions on how to deal with all sorts of issues, from getting your greencard, incorporating, writing your own will or trust to buying a house. No lawyer needed! Forms are included on CD-rom, as is excellent website support. Best of all, the books clearly state if and when you should consult a real lawyer. These are tools written by lawyers who are fed up with overcharging customers and making law inaccessible through complex language. Most solutions are common sense, and Nolo tells you how to do it without breaking the bank (or the law).

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The social search platform Searchles was launched today at http://www.searchles.com search + circles = Searchles. The site was conceived to help users connect with their friends and share their favorite websites. Searchles is a search platform centered on social groups, not individuals. Searchles will soon be integrated with the Dumbfind search engine so users will influence search results.

"Words and tags have no credibility unless they are backed up by someone you know. We created Searchles to put users in control of their search experience and to let them harness the collective brainpower of their peers," said Chris Seline, CEO and founder of Searchles and the search engine Dumbfind. "I was also tired of getting swamped with emails from friends on every subject that interested them. Now, I will just go to their profile and check out what they are doing."

The developers of Searchles have also achieved full integration with YouTube so when you tag a video from YouTube or Google Video, the video is automatically integrated into the Searchles site. Your friends won’t have to leave the site to watch your favorite videos. They are integrated directly into search results.

Here is a comprehensive list of features you will find at Searchles.com:

- Automatic integration of YouTube and Google Videos- Personal Flash tag clouds you can install on your MySpace page- Create groups on any topic to share URL’s with like minded people- Discuss URL’s with friends- Save URL’s to Searchles that are accessible from anywhere- Tag URL’s for easy recall- Searchles automatically downloads documents and indexes them for maximum searchiness- Connect with your friends and URL’s will be automatically shared

This may not be news to many of you, but for $100 you can obtain a non-resident New York Public Library membership that will allow you access to their available databases, e-books, audio books, and videos available for legal downloading. You do not have to physically pick up your card, they will mail it to you!

Friday, June 23, 2006

Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. His forthcoming books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

A new and relatively simple method for discovering the date when centuries-old art prints and books were produced has been developed at Penn State. The method could reveal long-sought information about thousands of undated works printed on hand-operated presses before the development of modern printing methods in the mid-19th century, including works by Rembrandt and Shakespeare. "The discovery that the wood blocks and metal plates used for printmaking deteriorate at a clocklike rate means that we can now use the prints as a 'print clock' for determining the date a work was printed," said Blair Hedges, professor of biology at Penn State and author of the paper describing the research, which will be published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) are ubiquitous in everyday technology, from mobile phones and laptops to car stereos and coffee machines. But the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display is emerging as a credible flat-panel alternative thanks to some important advantages over LCDs.

OLEDs possess the most fundamental feature needed in a display - they look great. As the name implies, OLEDs are diodes and function by injecting holes and electrons into a recombination region from which coloured light emerges. Different organic materials emit red, green, blue or other wavelengths of light, and come in small molecule and polymer form. Because they are emissive, OLEDs also have an excellent viewing angle, good contrast and high brightness.

Flexible OLEDs could be used in applications such as shop signage, electronic shelf labels, novel forms of advertising displays and even electronic books or paper. Most developers agree that even entry-level products are still at least 2-3 years away due to technical challenges, but this represents an important long-term option for OLEDs.

Opera has released version 9 of their feature-laden browser and it really looks good! This latest iteration integrates tabbed browsing, thumbnail previews, integrated search, BitTorrent and much more. Plus, it's a free download!

Monday, June 19, 2006

Library catalogs are at a cross-roads, and it is time to consider a new and improved vision for these tools. If the library catalog and its utility do not evolve, then the utility of a library will increasingly become irrelevant. Libraries and librarians bring a certain expertise to the acquisition, evaluation, and dissemination information. This expertise is not limited to books, journals, and videos, so why should the most significant electronic public face to a library -- its catalog -- be limited in such a way?

Friday, June 16, 2006

"Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has asked that college students refrain from citing Wikipedia as a source of academic research.

Yes, some actually are...and then complaining to him when teachers give them failing grades for doing it.

While speaking at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Wales said that he receives about 10 e-mails a week from complaining college students. While Wales thinks Wikipedia is useful for many things, he said that he would like to make it known that he does not recommend it to college students for serious research.

He also expressed little sympathy for any college student who would still rely on an encyclopedia for academic info. He did say, however, that Wikipedia has considered putting out a fact sheet on the site. It would explain the nature of Wikipedia and why it's not always a definitive source. Teachers could hand it out, he said.

Aside from the obvious accuracy debate, the mere nature of Wikipedia as a constantly changing open source encyclopedia goes against the purpose of academic attribution.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Want to find those IRS forms to get in your taxes on time? Need to figure out where to send your DMV fees, or find the phone number for your local parks and rec department? Google U.S. Government Search launches today -- it's a site on which you can 1) search across a huge index of U.S. Federal, state and local government websites via a single search box, and 2) stay up to date through personalized content feeds from government agencies and press outlets. Off you go.

An insightful and funny look at students who cheat, and cheat badly. Alex Halavais in his blog "a thaumaturgical compendium" lists suggestions that are, "almost guaranteed to pass off your plagiarism and cheating as your own work."

This will allow the faculty to remain in blissful ignorance, believing that—despite the low pay—they are spreading knowledge in the world, while at the same time convincing your parents to continue to pay for several more years of school, drunken orgies, and Prada bags. Your classmates who do not follow the above rules will constitute the “low hanging fruit,” easily picked off and tormented by mean-spirited unfulfilled teachers for their own amusement. You, however, will rise above the fray, secure in your superious ability to act smart, even if you don’t understand the text you are passing off as your own.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

A few years ago BMW released a series of acclaimed films by directors such as John Frankenheimer, Ang Lee, Tony Scott and they were quite good. This year BMW has comissioned a series of four downloadable audiobooks from Don Winslow, James Flint, Simon Kernick and Karin Slaughter. From the site:

"Put on your seatbelt and prepare for highs, lows and plenty of twists and turns. BMW, in conjunction with Random House, brings you BMW Audio Books, a unique series of specially- commissioned short stories showcasing the work of some of the finest contemporary writing talent. Each gripping audio book is yours to download for free. Listen to them on your MP3 player, your laptop or ideally, in the car. So sit back, hit play and enjoy the ride."

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

This is straight out of a science fiction movie, but if they can actually make it come true, it may be extremely useful. This Fukuda’s Automatic Door fits like a glove, and opens just enough to fit the exact shape of the person or the object that’s passing through. Its motion-detecting portal saves energy by keeping a door from having to open and close all the way, which helps to maintain a stable temperature in a room, and can prevent dirt or other materials from entering. In addition to people, this sci-fi door can be used to accommodate objects large and small, like packages dropped off at a post office, or even a car coming through a garage door. And, it will be most useful for people who are handicapped or can’t manage to open and close the doors very easily.

It’s still in prototype mode right now in Japan. You can check it out at e-taf.com.jp , but it’s in Japanese only.

Amazon, the world's biggest bookseller, is in talks with Cambridge company, Plastic Logic, about the end of books as we know them.

Plastic Logic has come up with the ultimate in e-books, overcoming the problem of reading an inflexible page on a screen - something which was never going to usurp the traditional book.

News of the Amazon/Plastic Logic link was given to a Cambridge audience on Thursday night when Hermann Hauser delivered the RSA Lecture at Magdalene College.

His theme was: "What makes a good entrepreneur" and one of Cambridge's hottest entrepreneurial endeavours at the moment is Plastic Logic, which is making microchips cheap as chips by printing them with plastic ink as opposed to etching in silicon.

"The reason why Amazon doesn't sell e-books at the moment is because people don't like reading on a screen, but now they can curl up with an e-book," Dr Hauser said.

This past week, Plastic Logic has been showing off its new product concepts at a trade show in San Francisco, under the heading 'Life is Flexible'.

All the concepts incorporate PL's radical new flexible display technology, and, in the company's words: "They illustrate the inevitable transformation we will see in everyday products as a result of plastic electronics over the next decade."

The IEEE has just tasked a working group with finalizing the specs on the so-called RuBee protocol, which uses magnetic -- as opposed to radio -- signals in order to transfer information, making it useful for so-called "harsh environments" where RFID chips fail, such as retail locations where shoplifters line their bags with aluminum foil to fool anti-theft systems. While RuBee's similar transmission range and cost would make it seem like a no-brainer replacement for current RFID applications, its relatively slow speed makes it unsuitable for tracking the numerous, moving products in a typical warehouse. RuBee-enabled devices will also have the advantage of transmitting data directly to the Internet, and with backers like Sony, HP, IBM, Best Buy, and Tesco, you can bet that we'll be hearing more about this tech in the coming year.

Google announced today an update to their popular Google Earth software as well as the release of their 3D software SketchUp which integrates with Google Earth.

From the site:

Adding a deck? Remodeling your kitchen? From simple to detailed, conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp (free) lets you populate the world with true 3D objects. Want to build a fully dimensioned 3D model that can be used as the basis for your next do-it-yourself project? Google SketchUp's expanded feature lets you build in as much detail as your project requires.

Google SketchUp is free for personal use. No registration is required.

Friday, June 09, 2006

The U.S. House of Representatives definitively rejected the concept of Net neutrality on Thursday, dealing a bitter blow to Internet companies like Amazon.com, eBay and Google that had engaged in a last-minute lobbying campaign to support it.

By a 269-152 vote that fell largely along party lines, the House Republican leadership mustered enough votes to reject a Democrat-backed amendment that would have enshrined stiff Net neutrality regulations into federal law and prevented broadband providers from treating some Internet sites differently from others. More at the above link.

Sorry. I published this on the wrong blog (meant for my family blog) but I'll leave it here, too. These were great!This year, for the first time, we planted "heirloom" tomatoes - tomatoes from seeds your grandfather might have grown. I can't tell you how wonderful these are! So sweet and flavorful. On the left is a "Purple Giant" and on the right is a "Rainbow".These are the two large tomatoes mentioned above and a salad sized "Tommy-toe" and a yellow grape variety. Delicious! You gotta love Summer and the tomatoes it brings!

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Google Browser Sync, free for download in beta from Google Labs, allows users to synchronize Firefox settings over multiple computers. Bookmarks, passwords, histories, and even persistent cookie preferences for specific sites are transferred, so that users don't have to spend time tediously adding them to each computer on which they use Firefox. Google Browser Sync can also "remember" which tabs and windows were open at last use, and "reopen" them when you open Firefox on another computer.

David Coallier has created an interesting prototype for a new kind of search he wants to see Google implement; a real-time synonyms search. For example, you enter “war” in the search box, and instantly you’ll see a list of synonyms or related terms (like “battle”, “crusade” and “campaign”). It’s a bit of a mixture between Google’s synonyms operator (the “~”), and Google Suggest’s auto-completion.

Friday, June 02, 2006

CChits is a web-app meant to help people find and share cool music that's been released under Creative Commons licenses. It's built on Ning, a site that makes it easy to clone and customize web applications; in this case, CChits clones the popular link-sharing site Digg.